Weiss Schnee

I'm a Schnee. I have a legacy of honor to uphold. Once I realized I was capable of fighting, there was no longer a question of what I would do with my life. It was my duty.

„

~ Weiss Schnee

Summary

Weiss Schnee is the second member of Team RWBY. Her weapon is a Dust revolver/rapier named Myrtenaster, and her semblance allows her to create magical glyphs in battle. At 17 years of age, she is an heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, a corporation famous for its sometimes shady business dealings, dangerous practices, and mistreatment of its Faunus laborers. Both the Schnee Dust Company and the Schnee family have been targets of the White Fang terrorist organization for years, leading to Weiss' inherent distrust of the Faunus. Weiss chose to become a Huntress over taking a job at SDC to restore her family's honor, as her father caused the company to decline. At the start of the show, she was shown as self-centered, standoffish, and an obnoxious know-it-all, but has matured somewhat over the course of the show. She has a noticeable scar over her left eye, which she is assumed to have acquired in a fight against a living suit of armor in the 'White Trailer'.

Stamina: Average (As seen after the fight with the Nevermore, when the other three girls showed no signs of fatigue, Weiss was exhausted. However, this may be attributed to the repeated use of her Semblance)

Intelligence: Very high, both in the conventional and the combative senses (Claims to be the smartest girl at Beacon Academy, though this may be an exaggeration)

Weaknesses: She is usually a tsundere, being stubborn and prideful on a number of occasions (but this has diminished over the course of the story). Has limited endurance, has not yet mastered her summoning, continual use of her Aura will cause it to decay to the point where she can be left weakened or even incapacitated.

Notable Attacks/Techniques:

Myrtenaster - Myrtenaster is standard-sized for a rapier and primarily silver-gray in color. The hilt possesses four prongs that encase the revolver-like chamber around the ricasso, in a manner somewhat alike to a swept hilt. This mechanism can be controlled by the sword-hand, enabling her to seamlessly cycle the chamber in combat. Myrtenaster is highly durable, able to slash a giant suit of armor with no visible wear on the blade. Its most prominent ability lies in the revolver-like mechanism held within the hilt, which contains various colors of Dust, activated by a trigger on the underside of one of the prongs. The mechanism can be opened on a hinge, allowing Weiss to replace empty vials. As a result, the weapon appears to have no tang. With a pull of the trigger, she can release Dust onto Myrtenaster's blade, or even combine Dust with her Semblance. There are six slots in total, each of which contains a vial of Dust. The revolving chamber is constantly stocked with red, cyan, violet, white, yellow, and blue Dust. Sometimes, when Weiss utilizes the Dust in Myrtenaster, runes of the Dust's color appear on the blade, but only white and red have been shown to do this so far.

Red Dust: Fire - First seen "The Emerald Forest," when used directly, this mode allowed Weiss to manipulate fire.

Grey Dust: Wind - First seen in "Never Miss a Beat," when Weiss used it to cancel Flynt's sound waves.

Blue Dust: Ice - Weiss uses Ice Dust the most out of any other type, and is seen using it in a variety of ways:

Ice Crystals - First seen in the "White" Trailer, Weiss has shown the capability to create a wall of ice crystals on the ground.

Sheet Ice - First seen in "Painting the Town...," Weiss has shown the capability to form a thin sheet of ice on the ground.

Glyphs - Weiss is able to utilize her glyphs to manipulate what shape the ice will take. In "Painting the Town...," she places glyphs in front of Ruby's Crescent Rose to cause the bullets fired through the glyphs to erupt into ice crystals upon impact with the Atlesian Paladin-290. In "No Brakes," she uses a glyph to encase her team in ice, protecting them from a powerful impact. In "Breach," she uses a glyph to shape the ice into a giant sword.

Yellow Dust: Lightning

With Glyphs - First seen in "Painting the Town...," when she fired a yellow streak from Myrtenaster onto the ground beneath Blake to create a Haste glyph.

Semblance: Glyphs - One of Weiss' most notable abilities is her Semblance, which allows her to create glyphs that can be used in a variety of ways. Unlike in the trailer where she seems to use her glyphs to teleport, in the series her glyphs act as a way to accelerate her in a given direction, but she is clearly visible while doing this. With her glyphs she can create a platform in midair, enabling her to engage in aerial combat with no need to return to ground level or can be used to simply slow her decent. This technique is referred to as glyphs. Weiss is able to use her glyphs to increase her speed in combat, thus also increasing the force behind her attacks. Weiss also seems very proficient in the use of her Semblance, able to use it almost reflexively. Weiss also implements the use of her athleticism, displaying her enhanced reflexes, using several flips to evade attacks, or even go in for an attack, which allows her to deliver rapid attacks when combined with her glyphs. While on the ground, she can also create glyphs that she uses to greatly increase her speed by launching herself in a particular direction, seemingly gliding across air for a short time. Weiss has also been seen using glyphs on her teammates, such as the "Haste" glyph she uses on Blake in "Painting the Town...."

White: Energy - Weiss's default glyph that can create a seemingly solid force. Weiss can stand on this glyph, using it as a platform for various acrobatic movements, including braking a free-fall and quickly reversing her motion by kicking off of it mid-air. When directly channeled through the blade, the white setting instead creates what can best be described as a 'finishing move,' causing enormous damage to foes. When used on the Giant Armor, it appeared to disintegrate into ice shards after being hit with this move.

Red: Power - When channeled into a glyph, this seems to create a repulsion effect. In the "White" Trailer, this is used to completely cancel out the force behind one of the Giant Armor's sword strikes. In Players and Pieces, it is used to boost Ruby Rose towards the Nevermore.

Cyan: Ice - When channeled into Glyphs, it creates restraints that Weiss can launch towards a foe using a circling motion of Myrtenaster's blade, as well as sends out a wave or field of ice from the blade, useful for trapping or immobilizing a foe.

Black: Slash - This setting increases Weiss' attack power for a split second, allowing her to deal high damage with a slash attack. It is possible that this setting creates the black glyph that appears to have a motion-cancelling or adhesive effect, which Weiss used to hold Ruby in her makeshift slingshot until she had properly aimed her teammate at the trapped Nevermore.

Blue: Gravity - When channeled into a glyph, this setting creates an anomalous gravitational field directly above the glyph. In the "White" Trailer, Weiss uses this setting to launch the Giant Armor in the air after luring it onto the glyph. In "Players and Pieces", it enables Ruby Rose to ascend a vertical cliff-face as if she were running along the ground.

Yellow: Haste - Weiss' yellow "Haste" glyph empowers its targeted user, accelerating the speed of their movements and increasing the threshold on the number of times they can use their special abilities.

Weiss frequently demonstrates the ability to combine Dust with one's Semblance, most often with ice. It appears that she uses her glyphs to direct the movement and manifestation of Dust, in order choose what shape the ice will take. In "Players and Pieces," she does this to create a curved wall of ice between Ruby and the Death Stalker's stinger. In "Painting the Town...," she uses a trio of glyphs to encase Ruby's bullets with Ice Dust that detonates upon impact. In "No Brakes," she uses a glyph to force the ice crystals into a dome shape around herself and her teammates. In "Breach," she charges up a glyph to create a giant ice sword and swing it.

Summoning: According to Winter the Schnee family has the ability to summon avatars of the foes that they've defeated, the stronger they are the better. Although Weiss claims that she has no ability in this department she is shown to summon an extremely scaled down sword of the Giant Armor. Later in "Heroes and Monsters" when she rushes to Velvet Scarlatina's aid she manages to summon the sword in its proper size along with the arm of the Giant Armor, being powerful enough cleanly slice through an Atlesian Paladin. As shown in the episode Tipping Point she is also able to summon a Boarbatusk.